Friday, December 30, 2016

Well, I'm back from Christmas break, 4 days in Massachusetts that turned into a litany of over-eating, from the casino buffet on the ride up (followed by a large take-out family-sized order of Chinese food on Christmas Eve) to the big holiday lunch the next day (followed by leftover turkey on toast that night), followed by getting together with friends at various restaurants, and I think you see where I'm going with this. Plus there was free breakfast at the hotel, so of course we had to make time for that, since it's the most important meal of the day, I hear.

But I think I really set myself up for failure by ending the year with "A Merry Friggin' Christmas" - I mean, I know how my life tends to parallel the movies I watch, or maybe vice versa. So dealing with my own dysfunctional family over Christmas seemed to be right in step with that. My sister and I quarreled over the preparation of Christmas lunch, even though my mother and I have cooked it together, the same way, for the last 7 years, and we've got a system for getting everything done. I kept my cool, though, and informed her that I welcomed her help, but not her taking over the process.

The next day, my uncle and cousin came over, with my cousin's 2 kids, and tempers flared up over politics, since my uncle and cousin both identify as Republicans now, one supports Trump and the other doesn't, but they're both clueless about what the GOP is all about. Me, I tend to look at which party certain groups like the KKK support and then vote for the other guy, but what do I know? Some people are blinded by the promise of smaller government because they think it means more money in their pocket, but some of those people are also at the income level that will benefit least of all from any proposed tax break, so it seems like loaning someone your car to allow them to run you over. Again, what do I really know, but the conversations started to remind me about hearing my German grandmother say good things about Hitler, like "He was great for Germany, he just took things a little too far..."Ya think?

On top of that, my parents just couldn't stop being...well, parents. They're great people, really they are, very charitable and generous, to a fault, even. Since I moved out 30 years ago they just started taking on other people to be parents to, not only my cousin but then found themselves responsible for various family friends and hangers-on, so it's a wonder that none of those people ever found a way to take all their money. But, considering how gullible they are when it comes to telemarketers and spam e-mail links, I suppose it's just a matter of time. All they want to talk about these days are their retirement accounts and what's going to happen to their house after they pass on, so it's likely that any conversation they have with a stranger will contain enough information for that person to commit identity theft.

Anyway, it's time to try and make some sense out of 2016, which is a tall order, and then take a look at what's coming up next. Not in the news, I mean, just with my movies. At least that's one thing I can work on getting under control. When I started Year 8, there were 160 films left on the watchlist, and it looks like when I start Year 9, that number will be 145. Once again, an appalling lack of progress was made if you look at the numbers - at this rate, it would take another 10 years to clear the list. So in the coming year, I've simply got to enforce the rule about only adding 1 film for every 2 I watch, that's the only way I'll have even a shot at finishing in 2017. You'd think that with 300 slots it would be no problem to clear the list, but it just doesn't seem to work that way. Out of those 145 films, only 12 of them were added in 2015 or earlier, so that means that the vast majority came on during the current calendar year. So math tells me that even if I watched everything on the list now, which would take 145 days, during that time I could add another 72 films, then while watching those 72 I could add another 36, and so on. 145 + 72 + 36 + 18 + 9 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 287, and that's awful close to the 300 allotted spaces in 2017.

I went to the movies - like, out to the theater - a total of 9 times in 2016, which for me is a LOT. That's just about once a month during regulation play. I stepped out to see "London Has Fallen", "Nerdland", "Batman v Superman", "Star Trek Beyond", "Deadpool", "Captain America: Civil War", "X-Men: Apocalypse", "Ghostbusters" and "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" on the big screen, the way it's supposed to be, and I don't regret any of that - if anything, I'd like to see MORE movies in theaters in 2017, but it's extremely hard to work them in, if I'm going to maintain actor linking.

Which brings me to the difficulties involved in keeping the chain going AS a chain. Maybe it's time for me to drop the linking requirement, because it really does get in the way sometimes, plus it's a LOT of work to keep re-organizing the list to accommodate both the new films that get added to it, AND the release schedule of films I want to see in theaters. That's why I'll see a film like "Ghostbusters" on opening night, but I'll hold off on posting the review for several months, until I can properly link to it, or it becomes thematically appropriate. I still maintain they should have released "Ghostbusters" closer to Halloween - I mean, it just makes sense.

Also regarding linking, I'm considering a rule change for 2017 - no big deal, I mean, I make the rules, I should be able to change them. What I'd like to do is allow for a character to link one film to the next, regardless of what actor or actress plays that character. I've sort of been doing this all along, like I watched most of the James Bond films in a row a couple years ago, in the order that best suited my needs, without worrying over who was playing Bond in each film. With the Bond films, I still maintained links thanks to the supporting actors, but I think going forward I'm going to allow characters to serve as links, whether it's Peter Pan or, say, Jesus Christ. I've got two films lined up for Easter, and allowing Jesus to serve as a link will just make things work out better. I've got two "Peter Pan" films coming up also, so I think this will allow them to live next to each other in harmony.

These are the topics that kept recurring in the movies I watched in 2016:

1) Sequels, remakes and reboots. No surprise, Hollywood keeps recycling old ideas, which is very green of them, and by green I mean profitable, not just eco-friendly. There's big money to be made in keeping franchises going, or by saving money on writing new ideas by just remaking the old ones. This was the year of sequels "Despicable Me 2", "How to Train Your Dragon 2", "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For", "The Expendables 3", "Dumb and Dumber To", "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation", "Night at the Museum 3", "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2", "Taken 3", "Hot Tub Time Machine 2", "Pitch Perfect 2", "Curious George 3", "The Smurfs 2", "Star Trek Beyond", "X-Men: Apocalypse", "Captain America: Civil War", "Spectre", "Hotel Transylvania 2", "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2", "Zoolander 2", "Ted 2", "Kung Fu Panda 3" and even "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel",

Then there were reboots like "Robocop" (2014), "Terminator Genisys", "Fantastic Four" (2015), "Ghostbusters" (2016), "The Invasion" (2007), "The Pink Panther" (2006) and "The Brady Bunch Movie". Special shout-outs to "Star Trek Beyond" (a sequel to a reboot), "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" (which is both a sequel and a prequel), "The Pink Panther 2" (another sequel to a remake), "A Very Brady Sequel" (you guessed it, a sequel to a reboot), "Red Dragon" (a prequel and a remake) and "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" (somehow it's a sequel and a prequel to a reboot).

2) Films I'd been putting off for a long time - this category runs the gamut, everything from "Yentl" to "Sid and Nancy" to "Nacho Libre". Sometimes I just can't find a link to a film, because it has so few actors, or actors who haven't made too many other films, so an unlinkable film could languish at the bottom of my list for a few years. Or in the case of "Yentl", it's on the list as a formality because my wife owns a copy - but eventually it did come in handy, linking "The Main Event" and "Heartburn". Other films that it felt good to FINALLY cross off the list included "The Elephant Man", "The Lost Boys", "Barry Lyndon", "Crumb", "Breaking Away", "Hudson Hawk", and 4 Cheech & Chong films. Then there are the classic (and classy) films that I am proud to say I finally watched, like "The Best Years of Our Lives", "Mrs. Miniver", "Meet John Doe", "Sergeant York", and "You Can't Take It With You". I think "Catch-22", "Deliverance", "American Gigolo", "Evita", "The Great Waldo Pepper", "The Warriors" and even "Pretty in Pink", "About Last Night..." and "St. Elmo's Fire" all sort of qualify as modern-day classics that I should have knowledge of. I also managed to finally get to multiple-film franchises like "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider", "Grumpy Old Men", "The Brady Bunch", "XXX", and the classic "Thin Man" films.

3) More recent films - In addition to the nine films I watched in theaters (mentioned above), I got to a LOT of recent comedies and dramas, including some Oscar-nominated fare from last year and the year before, like "The Danish Girl", "Boyhood", "Brooklyn", "The Martian", "Big Hero 6" and "Inside Out". And of my 300 films this year, over 50 of them were released in 2015, and 37 were released in 2014, so together that made up the real bulk of the list. That's good, it means I'm getting closer to being current, but "getting closer" could just mean that I'm never really going to catch up. Still, getting to relatively recent hits like "Sisters", "Daddy's Home", "Spectre", "The Night Before", "The Man from "U.N.C.L.E.", "Ricki and the Flash", "Southpaw", "Vacation" and even "Pixels" gives me hope that just maybe, I'm making some kind of progress.

4) Superhero films - this was a big category again (for like, what, the 4th or 5th year in a row?) In addition to this year's Marvel films "Deadpool", "Captain America: Civil War" and "X-Men: Apocalypse", I caught up on two more that I missed from last year - "Ant-Man" and "Fantastic Four". Plus "Big Hero 6" also qualifies here, and "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For" is similarly based on comic books.I also managed to program over a week of DC superhero movies, starting with "Batman v Superman", that included 7 animated films with Batman and/or Superman, plus documentaries about Adam West's career as Batman, and Nicolas Cage's near-disastrous attempt to play Superman. Then there are films that might as well be superhero films, like Scarlett Johansson getting crazy superpowers in "Lucy", and certain action heroes like John Wick and James Bond are superhero-like - which brings me to:

5) Action films/spy films - in addition to watching the most current Bond film, "Spectre", I watched the latest installments in these franchises: "The Expendables 3", "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation", and "Taken 3". Terrorists attacked world leaders in "Olympus Has Fallen", "London Has Fallen", and agents also went to work in "Kingsman: the Secret Service", "XXX", "XXX: State of the Union", "Dying of the Light" and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." Characters who thought they were out got pulled back into the life, in both "John Wick", "The Prince" and "The Equalizer", and I saw the comedic side of international intrigue in films like"Spy", "The Man", "Snakes on a Plane" and "The Trouble With Spies".

6) Then you've got your basic cop + crime films, like "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For", "Narrow Margin", and the god-awful "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2". Classic detectives also went to work in "Marlowe", "The Long Goodbye", and the "Thin Man" series. Burt Reynolds fought crime in "Stick", "Hard Time", "Heat" and "Hustle", Liam Neeson took on bad guys in "Run All Night", "A Walk Among the Tombstones" and "Taken 3", while Roy Scheider stepped up against injustice in "52 Pick-Up", "The Seven-Ups" and Blue Thunder. Murders were committed (or...were they?) in "Sunset", "The Judge", "Under Suspicion", "Gone Girl", "A Perfect Murder", "True Story", "Bernie" and (serially) in "Red Dragon", kidnappings took place in "Inherent Vice" and "Don't Say a Word", while the underworld of drugs and drug-dealers was investigated in "The Counselor", "Layer Cake", "Savages" and "Sicario". That's a lot of crime.

7) In the world of Sci-Fi, crime was also dispatched in "Robocop" (2014) and "Robocop 3". But then the aliens invaded, in films like "Edge of Tomorrow", "Pixels", "The Faculty" and "The Invasion". Once humanity dealt with that, we took to the moon and stars ourselves, in films like "Supernova", "Serenity", "Star Trek Beyond" "Way...Way Out" and "The Martian" - yeah, it didn't always go well. And in a galaxy far, far away, the rebels stole the Death Star plans in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story". Meanwhile, back on Earth, the future was either utopian or dystopian, in films like "Gattaca", "Vice", "Tomorrowland, "Snowpiercer" and "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes". Pick your favorite future, I guess. And in fantasy films, Angelina Jolie cast evil spells in "Maleficent" (she wasn't bad, exactly, she was just drawn that way...)

A special class of sci-fi, fi, often my favorite, is Time Travel - and in 2016, these films stepped out of the Delorean: "Terminator Genisys", "Hot Tub Time Machine 2", "From Time To Time", "Once Upon a Yesterday" and "About Time". Those last two were both romance-oriented, and that brings me to:

8) Romance films - the rocky road to true love is never easy, but it seems this year it was more difficult than most. Duplicity and deceptions were prominent, especially in "Original Sin", "Two Girls and a Guy", "The Pick-Up Artist", "Maid in Manhattan", "The Wedding Planner", "Alfie", both "Bridget Jones" films, "Bounce", "Heartburn" and "Brooklyn". And people from the 1980's had to struggle with relationships in "Pretty in Pink", "Betsy's Wedding", "St. Elmo's Fire", "About Last Night...", "He Said, She Said", and "One From the Heart". Some people had to travel to find love, as seen in "The Holiday", "Made in Paris", "The Pleasure Seekers", "Aloha" and "Brooklyn", and some people found it right at home, in "Trainwreck", "They Came Together" and both "Grumpy Old Men" films. Then Burt Reynolds fell for Jill Clayburgh in "Starting Over" and for Goldie Hawn in "Best Friends".

As a bonus, there were two romancefilms about having babies - "For Keeps" and "She's Having a Baby", and three about kinky sex - "Secretary", "Fifty Shades of Grey" and "Sex Tape". So, a little something for everone.

Then there were the historical romances, with Charles Dickens and his mistress in "The Invisible Woman", JMW Turner and his mistress in "Mr. Turner", Ludwig Beethoven and his assistant in "Copying Beethoven"and Stephen Hawking and his wife in "The Theory of Everything", plus the groundbreaking story of transgender Einer Wegener/Lili Elbe in "The Danish Girl".9) Speaking of Literary matters, in addition to a film about Charles Dickens, this was the year I finally took on Jane Austen - with "Pride and Prejudice", "Emma", and "Sense and Sensibility". I'd been putting that off for some time, it's just a shame that "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" didn't air in time. Other films based on classic literature included "Anna Karenina", "The Count of Monte Cristo", "Barry Lyndon", and "The Island of Dr. Moreau". Oh, and don't forget "Exodus: Gods and Kings", based on a little book called the Bible, you may have heard of it. Then there was "Gone Girl", based on a more modern book, but since everyone was reading that like three years ago, it was great to catch up.

10) Horror films - some of these were also based on classic literature, namely "Dracula" and "Frankenstein". Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley's works were expanded upon and turned into "Dracula Untold", "Victor Frankenstein", "The Ghost of Frankenstein", "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" and "House of Frankenstein". Both monsters also turned up in "Hotel Transylvania 2", but in a silly sort of way. Oh, and I watched "Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", that was sort of based on a literary classic also, and was also not meant to be taken seriously. Bud & Lou also took on ghosts in "Hold That Ghost", and ghosts also showed up in "The Haunted Mansion" and the remake of "Ghostbusters". And more vampires appeared in "Vampire in Brooklyn", "The Lost Boys", "Once Bitten" and "Vampire's Kiss", Boris Karloff also showed up in "The Body Snatcher", and zombies made their one and only appearance in "Planet Terror", but that was in July - don't they know they're supposed to show up in October?"

11) Animation - In addition to "Hotel Transylvania 2", it was another banner year for animated films. There were 22 films, starting with "Despicable Me 2" and ending with "Kung Fu Panda 3". In between, I watched "How to Train Your Dragon 2", "Big Hero 6", "Turbo", "The Prophet", "Nerdland", "Inside Out", "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2", "Curious George 3: Back to the Jungle", "The Smurfs 2", "The Croods", no less than SEVEN animated films with Batman and/or Superman, and (somehow) TWO films about talking bears, "Paddington" and "Ted 2".

12) And speaking of bad behavior - like the kind seen in "Ted 2", there was plenty to go around. There were con artists in "Original Sin" and "Paper Moon", prostitutes in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" and "American Gigolo", and lots of drugs, (as I mentioned before under crime films). But let's not forget drinking, in films like "St. Vincent", "Trainwreck", "Sisters", "Joe", "The Night Before" and "A Merry Friggin' Christmas". And then some people got really out of control, like in "Tammy", "Maps to the Stars", "The Crew", "The D Train" and "Hot Tub Time Machine 2". One guy even snuck up to the top floor of the World Trade Center to walk across a tightrope (twice!) and another guy just drove around in a car, killing women ("Death Proof"). And in classic films, Jimmy Stewart imagined he saw a giant rabbit in "Harvey" and Shakespearean drama played out in both "Macbeth" and "King Lear".

Then there was a whole other kind of bad happenings, involving bad travel or road trips - there were plane crashes ("The Great Waldo Pepper", "The Flight of the Phoenix"), an overturned cruise ship ("Poseidon"), and a crazy tropical getaway ("Club Paradise"). Steve Coogan toured the restaurants of the U.K. in "The Trip", and then went "Around the World in 80 Days". Abbott & Costello went south of the border to Mexico in "Rio Rita", and Cheech & Chong came back with some drugs in "Up in Smoke". And Burt Reynolds & friends went on a rafting trip in Appalachia that didn't end well in "Deliverance". And a year that started with a comedian on a road trip ("Knock Knock, It's Tig Notaro"), also featured ill-advised car trips in "Vacation", "Dumb and Dumber To" and "A Merry Friggin' Christmas". Seems about right. 13) Documentaries - in addition to that Tig Notaro documentary, I watched a few others in 2016. Some were about actors, like "Starring Adam West" and "Listen to Me Marlon", plus the doc about the movie that never was, "The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?". Another was "Man on Wire", about that tightrope walker, Philippe Petit, and "All Things Must Pass" was about the decline of Tower Records, but the rest were about magazines and illustration: "Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon", "Very Semi-Serious" (about New Yorker cartoons), "It's Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise", and "Crumb", the story of the infamous (and it turns out, disgusting and rather messed-up) R. Crumb. 14) Then there were the biopics, which are kind of like documentaries, only they don't have to be as accurate. And for some (probably intentional) reason, nearly all of them were about people in the art, music or literary fields - "Mr. Turner", "The Invisible Woman" (Charles Dickens), "Copying Beethoven", "Get on Up" (James Brown), "Sid and Nancy" (Sid Vicious) and "Love & Mercy" (Brian Wilson). Oh, and Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything", that's sort of the one that doesn't fit, though he is a celebrity in the world of physics. 15) Other films about making art, music or movies included "Frida", "Artists and Models", "CBGB", "Whiplash", "24 Hour Party People", "Pitch Perfect 2", "Ricki and the Flash", "In a World...", "Sunset", "The Big Picture", "Hooper", "Best Friends", "The Stooge", "Abbott and Costello in Hollywood" and "Maps to the Stars". Oh, and, um, "Calendar Girls", about nude photography - but of old British ladies, so somehow that was artistic. And since artists are liars by nature, there were the films that combined art (or artifacts) with forgery or theft - "F For Fake", "An Honest Liar", "The Hoax", "The Forger", "Big Eyes", "Woman in Gold", "Hudson Hawk", the two "Pink Panther" movies, the two "Lara Croft" movies, and "The Mexican". That seems like a lot on a very specific subject - why can't we have art without someone trying to forge it or steal it?16) People are always stealing things in Westerns, too - as seen in "Bandidas", "Bandolero!" and "100 Rifles", but this year there were TWO films about people in the Old West trying to find and return stolen treasure, "Sam Whiskey" and "The Train Robbers". That was an odd coincidence. Plus there was my tribute to James Garner that featured him in different roles in four more Westerns, "Sunset", "Support Your Local Sheriff", "Support Your Local Gunfighter", and "Maverick". 17) Sports - "Maverick" was about playing poker, and that was also seen in "The Cincinnati Kid", starring Steve McQueen. McQueen also showed up in "Le Mans", a film about auto racing, and I also watched bicycle racing in "Breaking Away", and bike messengering in "Quicksilver". Other sports covered this year included boxing ("Southpaw", "The Champ" and "The Main Event"), wrestling ("Foxcatcher", "Vision Quest" and "Nacho Libre") plus a little football ("Everybody's All-American"), mountain climbing ("Everest") and golf ("The Caddy"). 18) War films - always a good standby, especially when Independence Day and Veteran's Day roll around. This year I covered World War II both on the field of battle ("A Bridge Too Far", "Fury", "The Great Raid", "Catch-22") and at home ("The Best Years of Our Lives", "Mrs. Miniver") and even through comedy ("Buck Privates", "In the Navy", "At War with the Army"). Then there was a quick look at World War I ("Sergeant York") and two more modern stories, one set in Iraq ("American Sniper") and one in Afghanistan ("Lone Survivor"). Yeah, neither ended on an upbeat note. I even had two films that looked at war from the Russian perspective, "Enemy at the Gates" and "K-19: The Widowmaker", though most of the actors involved did very poor Russian accents.19) Which leads me to politics, I wish I had concentrated more on this topic, given the outcome of the election, but how was I to know? Plus, I just didn't have the material. But, after watching "Evita", the film about Eva Peron, in January, the other political films I watched tell the tale - "The Brainwashing of My Dad" was about how the right-wing media bends facts and influences voters, "Meet John Doe" was about a man pretending to be someone he wasn't and accidentally starting a political movement, "The Big Fix" was all about investigating a political smear campaign, and "Man of the Year" was about a TV personality running for office as a joke, then somehow getting elected, to everyone's surprise, including his own. Jeez, it was all right there, and we didn't see it.20) The rest was sort of a grab-bag of Comedies - a couple with Jerry Lewis, ("The Ladies Man", "The Bellboy"), 6 with Abbott and Costello, two with the Marx Brothers ("The Big Store", "The Cocoanuts", and four with Cheech & Chong (finally!). Then there were two with Ben Stiller - "Night at the Museum 3" and "Zoolander 2", The 2 Brady Bunch movies x 2, and 2 more with Will Ferrell - "Get Hard" and "Daddy's Home". (Yeah, try not to think about those two titles together...)

21) And "Daddy's Home" was about an awkward father/stepfather situation. More family dysfunction was on display in "Sisters", "Boyhood" (divorced parents), "The Music Never Stopped" (father trying to connect with son), "Philomena" (mother looking for her son), "Ruby Cairo" (woman learning about her dead husband), and then there was "You Can't Take It With You" - that whole family was pretty crazy, like the ones in "Vacation" and "A Merry Friggin' Christmas". 22) That covers just about everything, except for three films, all directed by David Lynch - "Mulholland Dr.", "Lost Highway", and "The Elephant Man". OK, so that last one was a pretty straight-forward story, but he suckered me TWICE in those other films with unexplainable narrative twists that made no sense at all. And this is after I watched "Eraserhead" last year and SWORE I wouldn't watch another Lynch film - I went back on my word, and I paid the price. Really, if anyone can explain either "Mulholland Dr." or "Lost Highway" to me in a rational way, I'd be in their debt. This David Lynch guy owes me big time now, so that "Twin Peaks" reboot next year better be really, really great.

What film in 2016 got the highest rating? Again this year, I've got something of a split vote. No film scored a 10 or a 9 on my scale, so there's a five-way tie, with these films scoring 8's: "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice", "Captain America: Civil War", "Deadpool", "Spectre" and "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story". I think the system works, because I probably had enough tiny reservations with each of these that none of them should claim the top spot. Similarly, at the other end of the ratings scale, there's a six-way tie for last place, with these films scoring 2's: "Vice", "Hudson Hawk", "The Smurfs 2", "Two Girls and a Guy", "Vampire's Kiss" and "A Very Brady Sequel". They should all be ashamed of themselves.

And there's a noted voice actor in 3rd place, with 8 appearances:
Frank Welker - Big Hero 6, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 1, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 2, Hudson Hawk, Curious George 3: Back to the Jungle, The Trouble With Spies, The Smurfs 2, The Island of Dr. Moreau

7 appearances:
Bud Abbott + Lou Costello - Buck Privates, In the Navy, Rio Rita, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in Hollywood, Lost in a Harem, Hold That Ghost, Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Jerry Lewis - The Caddy, At War With the Army, The Stooge, Artists and Models, Way...Way Out, The Bellboy, The Ladies Man
Myrna Loy - The Thin Man, After the Thin Man, Another Thin Man,
Shadow of the Thin Man, The Thin Man Goes Home, Song of the Thin Man, The Best Years of Our Lives
Ann-Margret - The Pleasure Seekers, Made in Paris, Grumpy Old Men, Grumpier Old Men, The Cincinnati Kid, The Train Robbers, 52 Pick-Up
Liam Neeson - The Prophet, Run All Night, A Walk Among the Tombstones, Ruby Cairo, K-19: The Widowmaker, Taken 3, Ted 2

Do I have any regrets over my film choices of 2016? Only a few minor ones, but most can easily be negated by re-scheduling the films I passed on for 2017 slots - like "Sausage Party", "Suicide Squad", "Krampus", "Doctor Strange", the rest of the Dracula + Frankenstein films, and the time-travel films I couldn't get to, like "The Butterfly Effect 2" and "Project Almanac". Ironically, I ran out of time for those last two...

What else is coming up in 2017? A lot of films with 2015 and 2016 release dates, which have found their way on to the list recently. Remember, back in October I'd reduced the watchlist to 103 films, before going on break - that means 40 recent films showed up on cable, like "The Revenant", "The 5th Wave", "Anomalisa", "Joy", "Concussion", "Creed", "Legend", "The 33", "Truth", "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot", "Steve Jobs", "American Ultra", "Black Mass", "Mad Max: Fury Road", "Chappie", "Steve Jobs", and the animated films "Minions", "Shaun the Sheep", "Mr. Peabody & Sherman", and "The Peanuts Movie". Plus I recently completed my collection of Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes films, so I've got to find a way to work those in, and then there's 8 Fred Astaire films that I taped off of TCM last month. Those may find a home in February, along with several romance-themed films starring Dean Martin and/or Frank Sinatra.

I've got to figure out the best starting point in time for January 1 - usually it's easier to put together the February romance chain first, then work backwards from February 1. Tonight I'll try out some possible linking paths to see if that's even a working possibility. Ideally I'd like to isolate a film that only connects to one other film, and then start the year there. But we'll see, right now everything's a big mess, because I haven't been keeping the list as organized as I should have. And then, of course, the list keeps on changing...plus I have to review the 2017 release schedule. With "Star Wars: Episode VIII" coming out on 12/15/17, that's my target end point for the year - if things go well, I'll be back in two days with a starting point in mind.